Wisdom of Solomon 5: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The righteous man stands boldly before the people who mistreated him, and they are seized with fear and speak among themselves in regret, admitting they had mocked him and had gone astray from the way of truth. They compare everything they gained to a shadow, a passing ship, a flying bird, and a shot arrow, all of which leave no trace, and they say their own hope was like dust and smoke. The chapter then states that the righteous live forever and are cared for by the Most High, and it pictures the Lord putting on creation itself as armor and weapons, with lightning, hail, sea, rivers, and wind striking his enemies.

Claim by Claim

1. 5:1
   • The righteous man will then stand with great boldness
   • He will stand before the face of those who afflicted him
   • Those he stands before made no account of his labours
2. 5:2
   • When they see it, they will be troubled with terrible fear
   • They will be amazed at the strangeness of his salvation
   • His salvation goes far beyond all that they looked for
3. 5:3
   • They will repent
   • They will groan because of anguish of spirit
   • They will say within themselves that this was the man they once held in derision
   • They will say they made him a proverb of reproach
4. 5:4
   • They will call themselves fools
   • They accounted his life to be madness
   • They accounted his end to be without honour
5. 5:5
   • They ask how he is numbered among the children of God
   • They ask how his lot is among the saints
6. 5:6
   • They say they have erred from the way of truth
   • They say the light of righteousness did not shine on them
   • They say the sun of righteousness did not rise upon them
7. 5:7
   • They say they wearied themselves in the way of wickedness and destruction
   • They say they went through deserts where there was no way
   • They say they did not know the way of the Lord
8. 5:8
   • They ask what profit their pride brought them
   • They ask what good riches together with their boasting brought them
9. 5:9
   • All those things have passed away like a shadow
   • All those things have passed away like a messenger hurrying by
10. 5:10
    • Those things passed like a ship crossing the waves of the water
    • After the ship has gone by, no trace of it can be found
    • No pathway of the ship's keel can be found in the waves
11. 5:11
    • Those things passed like a bird flying through the air
    • No token of the bird's way can be found
    • The light air is beaten with the stroke of the bird's wings
    • The light air is parted by the violent rush and motion of the wings
    • The air is passed through by the moving wings
    • Afterwards no sign of where the bird went is to be found in the air
12. 5:12
    • Those things passed like an arrow shot at a mark
    • The arrow parts the air
    • The air immediately comes together again
    • A man cannot know where the arrow went through
13. 5:13
    • In the same way, as soon as they were born they began to draw to their end
    • They had no sign of virtue to show
    • They were consumed in their own wickedness
14. 5:14
    • The hope of the ungodly is like dust blown away by the wind
    • The hope of the ungodly is like thin froth driven away by the storm
    • The hope of the ungodly is like smoke dispersed by a tempest
    • The hope of the ungodly passes away like the remembrance of a guest who stays only a day
15. 5:15
    • The righteous live for evermore
    • The reward of the righteous is with the Lord
    • The care of the righteous is with the Most High
16. 5:16
    • The righteous will receive a glorious kingdom
    • The righteous will receive a beautiful crown from the Lord's hand
    • The Lord will cover them with his right hand
    • The Lord will protect them with his arm
17. 5:17
    • He will take his jealousy as complete armour
    • He will make the creation his weapon for the revenge of his enemies
18. 5:18
    • He will put on righteousness as a breastplate
    • He will put on true judgment as a helmet
19. 5:19
    • He will take holiness as an invincible shield
20. 5:20
    • He will sharpen his severe wrath into a sword
    • The world will fight along with him against the unwise
21. 5:21
    • Right-aiming thunderbolts will go abroad
    • The thunderbolts will fly to the mark from the clouds as from a well-drawn bow
22. 5:22
    • Hailstones full of wrath will be cast as out of a stone-throwing engine
    • The water of the sea will rage against them
    • The floods will cruelly drown them
23. 5:23
    • A mighty wind will stand up against them
    • The wind will blow them away like a storm
    • Iniquity will lay waste the whole earth
    • Ill dealing will overthrow the thrones of the mighty

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

5:1

This is a scene of judgment after death, and the righteous man is the one whose persecution was described in chapter 2, where the wicked plotted to test and kill him. "Boldness" translates a Greek word (parrhesia) for the frank, confident speech of someone who has a right to be heard, not mere daring.

5:2

"Strangeness" in 1611 English meant unexpectedness, not oddness, and "salvation" here means rescue or deliverance. They are astonished that the man they destroyed was brought through safely.

5:3

"Sometimes" in 1611 English means "formerly, at one time," not "occasionally." A "proverb of reproach" is a byword: a person whose name becomes the standard example of failure, quoted in jokes and insults.

5:4

"His end to be without honour" means more than an unhappy death. In this culture a life was judged by whether its ending came with public respect, surviving children and an honorable burial; a shameful end was taken as proof that the whole life had been worthless.

5:5

"The children of God" and "the saints" render "sons of God" and "holy ones," phrases that in Jewish writing of this period usually name the heavenly court, the angelic beings around God, rather than a group of humans. "His lot" is his allotted place or share, the word used for a portion of land assigned by casting lots.

5:6

The Greek of the second line reads simply "the sun did not rise for us." Some manuscripts, and the King James following them, repeat "of righteousness" there, which is why the King James says the phrase twice and the plain rendering only once.

5:7

The Greek verb can mean either "we wore ourselves out on" or "we glutted ourselves with" these paths; translators divide between the two, and the King James chose the first.

5:9

A "post" in 1611 English was a courier: a messenger riding fast from relay station to relay station with news. The image is of something seen for a moment and already gone.

5:10

The keel is the long timber running the length of a ship's bottom, the part that cuts the water. A furrow in a field stays; the furrow a keel cuts closes behind it.

5:11

"Token" in 1611 English means a sign or piece of evidence, not a keepsake.

5:13

The Greek says literally that as soon as we were born we ceased to be. The King James softens this into "began to draw to our end." Both readings are defensible, and either way the claim is that their whole life amounted to nothing but a passage toward death.

5:14

The word behind "dust" is the fine chaff that drifts away when threshed grain is tossed into the air, an image that returns in verse 23. The guest "that tarrieth but a day" is a lodger who stays one night and is never thought of again.

5:15

"The Most High" is an old title for God, meaning the one above everything else.

5:16

The Greek uses two royal words. The first can mean either royal rule or the royal crown, which is why the King James reads "a glorious kingdom" where other translators read "crown." The second is a diadem, originally a band of cloth tied around the head, the ordinary mark of a king in the Greek-speaking world.

5:17

"Jealousy" translates a Greek word for burning zeal. Applied to God in Jewish scripture it means fierce protectiveness of what belongs to him, not petty envy. "Creature" in 1611 English means anything created, so "the creature" is the whole created world, not an animal.

5:18

A breastplate is the armor covering the chest. From verse 17 to verse 20 the picture is of a soldier arming himself piece by piece, in the order a Greek soldier actually did it. "True judgment" renders a phrase meaning judgment without pretense: verdicts that cannot be bought or faked.

5:19

A shield is a big flat guard a soldier holds up. It stops arrows and swords from hitting him.

5:20

"The world" here is the Greek kosmos, the whole ordered universe, picking up verse 17: creation itself becomes the weapon. "The unwise" are not merely uninformed; the Greek word describes people out of their senses, acting like madmen.

5:21

A "thunderbolt" in 1611 English is a lightning strike imagined as a missile hurled down from the sky. "Go abroad" means go out widely, not go overseas.

5:22

A "stone bow" is a catapult, the siege engine that hurled stones at walls. "The floods" in 1611 English means rivers, not floodwater in general.

5:23

The wind image is winnowing: at harvest the threshed grain was thrown into the air with a fork so the breeze carried off the light chaff and left the heavy grain on the floor. The last sentence is ambiguous in the Greek and the King James keeps the ambiguity. It can be read as saying that lawlessness is itself what turns the earth into a wasteland and topples rulers, so the wicked destroy the world they governed, or as a description of what the storm does to the lawless.